Worth Saving
by trobokian queen
Summary: Damon's thoughts during the last few minutes of the Founders Day episode, where Damon thinks he's talking to Elena. Damon contemplates if he was really worth saving from the fire. Oneshot


**Disclaimer:**** I do not own Vampire Diaries.**

Worth Saving

I sauntered out the front door of Elena's hosue, my head held high with the devil-may-care smirk that had become so characteristic of me carefully plastered across my face. I looked like I owned the world. And usually, I thought I did own the world—my own personal play ground. But not tonight.

Tonight I didn't own the world.

I didn't even own my own world.

Tonight I realized that my world had been taken over by a spunky, annoying, dramatic, caring girl with long brown hair and piercing dark eyes—those eyes that pierced the soul I didn't want anyone to know I had.

Elena had saved me tonight.

I should have died. So many others had, vampires, that is. At the Founders Day Festival, when the fire works started, they weren't the only thing being set off. That damned device of Jonathan Gilbert that Bonnie was _supposed_ to have deactivated, alerted the whole town about the vampires.

I remember the pain it caused inside me- the dreadful sound that stabbed my ear drums like a knife, and it wouldn't go away. I remember how angry I felt, sinking to my knees, completely at the mercy of John Gilbert, who then injected me with vervain.

I remember the flames surrounding me in that old basement, seeing people die that I had no power to help. I couldn't even help myself. I could only watch the flames creep closer and closer, licking up the gasoline on the floor, and hungrily making their way over to devour me.

It wasn't right. It wasn't me. I was Damon Salvatore. I was the one who was supposed to make the trouble, and come out of it completely unscathed. I was the bad boy that just never seemed to die, that seemed to go on forever making everyone miserable. I was the annoyingly lucky one.

Not this time.

This time I was going to die, and I had no clever plans or fancy maneuvers to escape it. These flames would be my demise and the world would be minus Damon Salvatore and probably become very boring.

Elena and Stefan would get there very cliché happily ever after.

Bonnie would feel all self-righteous and good about herself.

Caroline and Matt would go off on their merry way.

Jeremy would always be stupid.

And the town of Mystic Falls would go back to being your safe and typical small town with a drastic decrease in hospital patients.

But as I was thinking all this, I noticed that the flames were suddenly dying down, and a figure was descending the steps to the basement. I looked up briefly to find my always-there-to-safe-the-day little brother rushing in to the rescue. He was too late though, to safe the ones that really mattered, like Anna.

Stefan took a hold of me and started hauling me back up the steps and out of the burning building. As soon as we had cleared it, the flames flared back up just as suddenly as they had died down. I was about to question the logic of that when I found the answer.

Bonnie.

She was standing right in front of us, a stern expression flashing across her tightened jaw. The only question remaining, was why the heck would she safe _me_? It couldn't have been her own idea. Bonnie's thinking was that she was ridding the world of evil in destroying me.

Someone must have convinced her to save me.

Stefan? Nah. He probably agreed with Bonnie. He probably wanted me out of the way so he didn't have to feel insecure about Elena. And even if my sanctimonious brother _had_ wanted to save me, just so he could rub it in my face later, Bonnie wouldn't have listened to _him_, to another vampire.

It had to have been Elena. Only she, who had been Bonnie's lifelong friend, could have convinced her to save someone like me.

But why me?

She must have thought, for some reason, that I was worth saving. That struck me. Hard.

If it were possible to restart a hundred year old dead heart, mine would be beating now.

Maybe in a way it was. For so long, I was content to be the "bad brother," the one that always enjoyed happiness at the price of someone else's. But tonight, I wanted to be good, to save the town I had long plotted to destroy, to save people that before had meant absolutely nothing to me, to win the heart of the girl I had only wanted at first so I could hurt my brother.

Now I wanted to be even better than good. I wanted to prove to Elena that she hadn't made a mistake in saving me, that I really was worth saving. I wanted to prove to her that I could love (and I don't mean myself). I wanted to prove to her that there was a light side beneath my dark façade.

I wanted Elena to see me as I really was.

The part I kept hidden from every one else.

The vulnerable side that didn't dare to love out of the fear of being broken twice.

I found her approaching the front porch of her house, so confident, yet unassuming, so strong, yet sensitive. "What are you doing here?" she asked me, eying me carefully.

It was the first time I couldn't look a person in the eye. "A failed and feeble attempt at doing the right thing," I answered, letting her see my frustration. With myself.

With perhaps not being able to live up to the standard of "worth saving."

I had gone to her brother Jeremy, hoping to do some right for the world. I told him about Anna. I told him about my part with Vickie, the girl he had previously been in love with. I even apologized for my part in it, which was pretty much a Damon Salvatore first.

Then I offered him the only thing I could—a balm for his pain. I offered to take away the memories of Anna dying, all the misery and grief that he was suffering.

He refused.

And he told me that removing memories doesn't take the pain away. There's always something there, even if you don't know what it's for. I actually felt small. Why did it seem that every time I tried to help, there was either nothing to be done, or there was everything to get worse? Maybe I wasn't capable of doing good.

"Which was…?" she questioned, interrupting my brooding thoughts.

I forced a half smile but let it fall just as quickly as it had crossed my face. I couldn't pretend to be nonchalant with her. But I didn't have tell her everything either. "It's not important," I told her quietly.

"You know," I confessed after a pause, "I came into this town, wanting to destroy it. Tonight I found myself wanting to protect it. How does that happen?" I asked her.

She just looked at me, watching my inner struggles surface right before her eyes.

I shook my head at her.

"I'm not a hero, Elena." And that was true. "I don't do good. It's not in me." I looked down, feeling defeated.

Then she picked me up. "Maybe it is," she argued. She sounded like she had faith in me. The same faith perhaps, that made her ask Bonnie to douse the flames long enough to let Stefan rescue me.

But that wasn't possible. How could she have faith in me, knowing what I was, comparing with my "perfect" brother, and her "too good" boyfriend.

"No," I said. "That's reserved for my brother. And you. And Bonnie." I looked down again.

"Even though she has reason to hate me, she still helped Stefan save me."

"Why do you sound so surprised?" Elena shrugged Bonnie's good deed off like it was nothing. Like she was taking it for granted that saving me was something necessary, that was every bit as important as saving the innocents.

But I wasn't innocent.

I have killed.

I have caused pain.

I have never felt sorry until now.

I didn't deserve to be saved, and Bonnie knew it. "She did it for you," I said. "Which means that somewhere along the way, you decided that I was worth saving."

I took a few steps closer until our faces were mere inches apart. I let her see the darkness in my eyes, the darkness I let build up to disguise the tears that threatened to betray me.

Yes, for the first time in longer than I can remember, I felt like crying. I didn't deserve Elena's kindness. I didn't even deserve to know her. And yet here we were. She had saved my life in more ways than she could possibly know, more ways than I'd probably ever admit, and by the look in her eyes, I could tell that somewhere, in some small recess of her pure heart, she cared for me. And I couldn't understand how.

"I want to thank you, for that," I told her seriously.

"You're welcome," she replied simply.

Then, I did something that even I hadn't planned for, something I was suddenly moved to do. I brushed my lips on her cheek. It was a gentle kiss, but in it I injected more love, more passion, and more gratitude than I had ever showed in my many and very insignificant lusty excursions. I nearly winced upon recalling those, wishing that all my life, I had only ever bestowed my affections on the girl who was so close to me right now.

When I pulled back, I looked into her large dark eyes, expecting to see disgust, or disapproval.

I found none.

There was just Elena, loving and defenseless, looking at me as though she had secretly longed for this closeness as much as I had.

And from there, we seemed to move on our own, as though there was some force pulling me toward her. I was still hesitant, not wanting to force Elena into anything. I wanted her to choose it.

She answered my questioning look with allowing her eye lids to slowly slide shut. Then I closed the gap between us, and our lips met.

I felt her small arms wrap around me, and my hands went to caress her cheeks.

There was something so beautiful in that moment, and yet I couldn't completely revel in it, in her touch. There was something off about it.

And it wasn't just the fact that I was kissing my brother's girlfriend.

It was like kissing her was something all too familiar.

It wasn't too long after that, that I discovered that the girl I had kissed and caressed, the girl I had lowered all my defenses for and had spilled my heart to had not been Elena.

It had been Katherine.

So, all those things she had said, and all her looks. Everything that had kindled in me a ray of hope that perhaps I had a chance at being good, had all been a fake.

All the things that I had told Elena, all the movements of my heart, had fallen on the deaf ears of a heartless vampire.

None of it had meant anything.

I could only come up with one conclusion.

Maybe Elena hadn't been meant to hear all of the things I had said tonight.

Maybe we were never meant to be close.

Maybe Elena wouldn't have cared to see the real me, anyway.

Maybe I was meant to get mixed up with Katherine. We were both the same kind. We were both bad.

Maybe I wasn't worth saving, after all.

**First Vampire Diaires fic. Please Read and Review!**


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